SWAN Day/Support Women Artists Now Day is an international initiative designed to showcase the power and diversity of women’s creativity. SWAN Day is dedicated to increasing visibility and opportunities for diverse women artists in all art forms. Since International Women's Day (8th March) we have been sharing Q+As with trailblazing women artists working professionally in the creative industries with a connection to the Isle of Man.
Alice Dudley
Alice Dudley is a visual artist and singer-songwriter. We caught up with her to tell us more about her experiences as a woman in her industry.
Creative degrees tend to be fairly female-dominated, and that’s certainly been my experience studying Fine Art, but that isn’t necessarily reflected in employment statistics. While we were recording island artcast, Olivia actually mentioned some pretty shocking statistics about this - like despite the fact that there were nearly double the amount of female graduates studying creative degrees in the UK in 2016-2017, only 33% of female graduates had found work in the creative industry 6 months after graduating, compared to 46% of male graduates.
Alice Dudley
Isla Callister
Isla Callister is a Manx musician and Gaelic speaker working as a freelance musician between Glasgow and the Isle of Man. Isla is a fiddle player raised on the rich culture and music from the island, and has developed her own unique sound that reflects her strong connection to her native language, music and home.
Ta mraane pooaral, cur pooar da mraane — Empowered women, empower women! When I see women supporting women I am filled with joy. The patriarchy has pitted women against each other for centuries and the stereotype is, is that women don’t and shouldn’t support other women. This idea (which only serves the patriarchy!), can be so internalised, and it’s so important that we unpick and unlearn this. Wonderful things happen when women support each other, work together and unite! Lifting other women up means celebrating and supporting their work and bringing other women a long with you - there is space for us all! As a white cis-gendered woman, this also means recognising my own privilege and supporting and highlighting the work of women of colour and those of minority genders.
Isla Callister
Bethany White
Bethany White is a Writer, Producer and Sound Designer at Dark Avenue Film. Now living on the Isle of Man with her partner, Patrick Crellin whom she founded and runs Dark Avenue with, Bethany tells us more about the challenges she faces as a woman in her creative field.
After going to an all-girls secondary school, and then to a university course which had a 50/50 gender split, I'm often surprised by how few women there are in the sound department. I was also surprised by the report by Stephen Follows and the Writer's Guild of Great Britain a few years ago to see the stats on gender of writers for UK film and TV productions 2001-2016; writing has always seemed like a more evenly split profession, but even in TV, which has a far better gender split than film, women had only accounted for 30% or writers on UK TV productions during that period. The exact gender split fluctuates through these stats, but there don't seem to be many trends towards equality in the duration of the study; not much has changed. And when you look at career progression, the stats speak for themselves; there's a smaller and smaller percentage women the higher up the ranks you go.
Bethany White
Bridge Carter
Bridget “Bridge” Carter is the creator of the Manx Bard and the Manx Youth Bard. The Manx Bard competition is held every year and is open to anyone aged 18 or over who lives full-time in the Isle of Man. Entrants are judged on the quality of poetry, their performance and on the initiative they can bring to this high profile role. Bridge helps to oversee the competitions to crown the bards, orgranise events, and help promote poetry in general on the Isle of Man.
Performing Arts allows us to be ourselves, to be self-assured in who we are. The skills learned by the younger generation in all different art forms are not only fun and engaging but provide them with experience and the key life skills such as confidence and discipline to help them succeed in life. Having an extracurricular interest such as the performing arts also provides children with a platform to grow into confident, resilient well-rounded individuals.
Bridge Carter
Janet Lees
Janet Lees is an artist, poet, filmmaker and facilitator.
Poetry (and literature as a whole) and visual art have traditionally been very male-dominated fields. It feels like things are finally shifting and particularly in the recent past there’s been more of a focus on redressing the balance, not only in terms of gender equality but also equality and diversity in the fullest sense. It’s so good to see this happening, with more and more opportunities offered specifically to emerging artists who have been marginalised.
Janet Lees
Eileen Schaer
Eileen Schaer is a Visual Artist (Painter) who we caught up with to tell us more about her experiences as a woman in her industry.
When Rose Wyllie won the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize as a woman aged 83! She said ......."When I was an art student the staff in museums were all male. It's still not as it should be, but its better".
Eileen Schaer
Alanna Lyes
Alanna Cowley, professionally known as Alanna Lyes, is a UK based electro-swing vocalist, songwriter, and front woman of Freshly Squeezed's electro-funk signees, Grinny Grandad. Alanna is originally from Peel in the Isle of Man and we caught up with her to tell us more about her experiences as a woman in her industry.
The music industry is massively male saturated. There are plenty of incredibly talented females but we clearly still have a big equal opportunities issue because the further mainstream you dive, the less and less female producers, songwriters etc you will see. I know many females in the industry, myself included, have been subject to very patronising behaviour, and this stereotyping of women in the industry can be detrimental to careers, widely disheartening and unjustly discrediting. That’s before I even get into the huge issue of the objectification and degradation of women depicted so often in lyrics and music videos...
Alanna Lyes
Adele Dube
Adele Dube is a Jazz and Pop singer and vocal coach based in Douglas, Isle of Man.
It is important for women in the arts to create a trusted space where we can support and empower one another as I feel it enables us to express ourselves better when we are in an environment where we can feel safe, listened to and valued.
Adele Dube
Jo Davies
Professor Jo Davies is a professional illustrator, writer, publisher and academic. Jo lives on the Isle of Man and has been a former college tutor at UCM.
I think that for women in particular the maternity penalty can be real – juggling family and household responsibilities alongside the demands of erratic pay and awkward deadlines can be challenging.
Prof. Jo Davies
